Contributors
Lynne Barrett is the author of the short story collections The Secret Names of Women and The Land of Go, and co-editor of Birth: A Literary Companion. Her fiction has appeared in One Year to a Writing Life, A Dixie Christmas, Miami Noir, A Hell of a Woman, Painted Bride Quarterly, Other Voices, and many other magazines and anthologies. She has been awarded the Edgar Allan Poe Award for best mystery story from the Mystery Writers of America and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. She lives in Miami where she teaches at Florida International University and edits The Florida Book Review. More information can be found at http://lynne.barrett.googlepages.com/.
William Bradley’s work has appeared in The Bellevue Literary Review, The Chronicle of Higher Education, College English, The Normal School, The Missouri Review, and other magazines. He lives with his wife in a small town in North Carolina called Murfreesboro, where they both teach at Chowan University.
Dolores Coe received her MFA in Painting from the University of South Florida in 1989. She was on the Faculty of the Ringling School of Art and Design from 1991 until 2005 where she was Director of the CORE Studio Program for a period and taught a variety of courses spanning traditional, time-based and digital media. She resigned her teaching position in Fall 2005 to pursue studio work full time. Her work has been widely exhibited in both solo and group exhibitions and her paintings are included in a number of public and private collections. (www.dolorescoe.com). She lives and maintains her studio on the Little Manatee River in Ruskin, FL.
Barbara Crooker has published poems in magazines such as Yankee, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Denver Quarterly; anthologies, including The Bedford Introduction to Literature (Bedford/St. Martin’s), Worlds in their Words: An Anthology of Contemporary American Women Writers (Prentice Hall), eleven chapbooks, and two full-length books, Radiance, which won the 2005 Word Press First Book Award and was a finalist for the 2006 Paterson Poetry Prize, and Line Dance, also from Word. She has received three Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowships in Literature, the WB Yeats Society of NY Prize (Grace Schulman, judge), the Grayson Books Chapbook Competition (Sue Ellen Thompson, judge,) and the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award (Stanley Kunitz, judge). She lives and writes in rural northeastern Pennsylvania and enjoys visiting friends in Bradenton, FL, every winter.
Nikki Devereux has been an artist her entire life, starting with sketches that she did as a very young child and then moving into oil painting classes by the time she was 11 years old. She remember being bent over a canvas at night, amongst so many other seasoned artists in the adult class that she was taking, and the smell of turpentine and oil paint was just intoxicating (both literally and figuratively). As a photographer, she let her early love for art and painting influence her work, and she constantly strives for that perfect composition and lighting. She is very passionate about photography and constantly learning new things. She is currently working on a series of photographs called “Four Seasons,” inspired by Alphonse Mucha’s “Les Quatres Saisons.” Travel and curiosity for language have led her around the world. Her travels and encounters with people, literature and culture have all come to play a role in her work, which takes many elements and blends them together, much as her heritage is a blending of races—French, Vietnamese, German and Irish.
Connie May Fowler, a Florida native, is a novelist, memoirist, and screenwriter. She is the author of several novels, including The Problem with Murmur Lee, a Redbook premier book club selection; Remembering Blue, a Chautauqua South Literary Award recipient; and Before Women had Wings, winner of the1996 Southern Book Critics Circle Award and the Francis Buck Award from the League of American Pen Women. She also published a memoir titled, When Katie Wakes.
Melanie Graham is a first year PhD student in poetry with the University of Lancaster, UK. Her work has appeared most recently in Harvard Summer Review, The Southern Quarterly, and The Homestead Review.
Kristin Hoyer is a middle school teacher from Miami who likes to read, bicycle, and right the world’s wrongs. When she’s not forcing kids to pass standardized tests, she conducts a creative writing club at her school. She studied English at the University of Florida and is still undecided about what she will do for the rest of her life. She just knows she wants to keep writing.
Susan Hubbard is the author of six books of fiction and coeditor of 100% Pure Florida Fiction, an anthology of Florida stories. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, Triquarterly, The Mississippi Review, and several other journals. She teach creative writing at UCF.
Ilyse Kusnetz previously published poems in Poetry Review and Crazyhorse, and her poems have been broadcast on BBC Radio-Scotland and NPR-WMFE. She is currently working on a full-length collection of poems entitled Tips from the Underworld. Since 2001, she has taught English and Creative Writing at Valencia Community College in Orlando.
Matt Larson was given a professional Nikon camera and darkroom outfit before he reached age 10. Both his father and bother were avid photographers and encouraged him to be a photographer. He attended the University of South Florida and obtained a B.A. degree in photojournalism. Twenty years later, he completed his MBA degree at Saint Leo University. Larson is employed by Media General which owns The Tampa Tribune, WFLA News Channel 8, and TBO.com. During the past 24 years there, he’s held positions as a multi-image producer, photographer, video producer, creative director, project manager and now, Community Partnerships Manager. On behalf of the Tribune, he’s had the opportunity to serve on several arts-related boards and committees, including: International Television Association, American Society of Media Photographers, The Tampa Bay Business Committee for the Arts, Mayor’s Public Art Committee, and more recently, the Glazer Children’s Museum. Larson admits that his discovery of plastic toy cameras reignited his love for photography and has brought him back to those early years of just having fun playing around in the darkroom and making art. His blog,
ToyCameraPlay.blogspot.com is a testament to his new found passion with toy cameras.
Bruce Marsh has exhibited his paintings extensively in Florida and the Southeast, and has had exhibitions in Los Angeles and New York. He received the State of Florida Individual Artist Grant on three separate occasions, has numerous exhibition awards including Best of Show in the Gasparilla Art Show of 1972 and 1973, and has participated in exhibitions at almost all of the major museums in Florida. He is represented in Tampa by the Clayton Gallery, and had a solo exhibition there in March 2005. He is also represented by Allyn Gallup Contemporary Art in Sarasota, Florida, where he had an exhibition in March 2007. During the past 25 years a major part of his efforts have been devoted to large scale painting for public spaces. There have been over 50 major institutional and corporate commissions, including three 8’ X 12’ canvases for the Orlando International Airport, a large mosaic mural for the City of Tampa at the Sulphur Springs Pool, and works for TECO, GTE, NCNB Bank, Bank of America, Celebration Health Center in Kissimmee, IBM in Boca Raton, and American Express in Jacksonville, among many others. Bruce and his wife, the painter Dolores Coe, currently maintain a home and studio on the Little Manatee River in Ruskin, and a cabin and studio in Franklin North Carolina.
Peter Meinke’s book about writing, The Shape of Poetry (new & revised version), has just been published. The Contracted World, his 14th book of poetry, is his most recent in the prestigious Pitt Poetry Series, which includes Zinc Fingers, Scars, and Liquid Paper. Unheard Music, a collection of short stories, came out in 2007. His poetry and fiction have received many awards, including two NEA Fellowships and three prizes from the Poetry Society of America. His book of short stories, The Piano Tuner, won the 1986 Flannery O’Connor Award. He directed the Writing Workshop at Eckerd College for many years and has often been writer-in-residence at other colleges and universities; from 2003 through 2005 he held the Darden Chair in Creative Writing at Old Dominion University. Eckerd College recently established The Peter Meinke Endowed Professorship in Creative Writing. Meinke’s work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The New Republic, and dozens of other magazines; he and his wife, the artist Jeanne Clark, have lived in St. Petersburg since 1966.
Susan Meyers is the author of Keep and Give Away (University of South Carolina, 2006), which received the SC Poetry Book Prize, the SIBA Book Award for Poetry, and the Brockman-Campbell Book Award. Her poems have also appeared, or are forthcoming, in The Southern Review, Crazyhorse, and jubilat. She won Yemassee’s 2007 Pocataligo Poetry Contest, judged by Peter Meinke.
David Moody is a Florida-based poet and writes out of Tampa. He has served as the founding Poetry Editor for Saw Palm and as Editorial Assistant to The Florida Review. He is the winner of the 2009 Zbar Poetry Contest.
Daniele Pantano is a Swiss poet, translator, critic, and editor born of Sicilian and German parentage in Langenthal (Canton of Berne). His next books, The Oldest Hands in the World (a collection of poems), The Possible Is Monstrous: Selected Poems by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, and The Collected Works of Georg Trakl, are forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press, New York. Pantano has taught at the University of South Florida and served as the Visiting Poet-in-Residence at Florida Southern College. He divides his time between Switzerland, the United States, and England, where he’s Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Edge Hill University.
Sarah Prevatt graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing in 2007 and currently teaches at the University of Central Florida. Her stories have appeared in The Cypress Dome, and she has had two pedagogy papers accepted by The Association of Writers and Writing Programs.
Adam Pridemore As a Ph.D. student in Literature commuting from Orlando to the University of South Florida in Tampa, Adam Pridemore has fostered a healthy love for all things Florida, even, ironically, the parts he passes on his daily drive down the beast that is I-4. Although his focus lies on the transatlantic nineteenth century, the sunshine state consistently intrudes on his academic interests. Though not a native son, he has adopted Florida and its fishing, and married his lovely wife in Key West, Florida, further linking him to the state. And Tom Levine now owes him a beer.
Liz Robbins’ poems have appeared recently in Barrow Street, MARGIE, Puerto del Sol, RATTLE, and storySouth, among others. Poems from her first book, Hope, As the World Is a Scorpion Fish (Backwaters Press), have been featured on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac and Verse Daily. She’s the recipient of a Schultz Foundation grant and an Intellectual Life Grant, and a nominee for Best New Poets and a Pushcart Prize. She’s an assistant professor of English and creative writing at Flagler College.
Wendy Thornton has published fiction in The Literary Review, South Dakota Review, Confluence, The Oregon Literary Review, and many other journals. In Spring, 2009, she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her story, “Finding Lizzie,” by editors of the MacGuffin Magazine. She has published memoir in Riverteeth and southlit.com. She is also a well-published poet, with poems forthcoming in Main Street Rag, Underground Voices, and Shadowtrain. She is President of the Writers Alliance of Gainesville, a member of the Gainesville Poets and Writers, and has been an invited reader for many non-profit organizations and events. She is currently seeking an agent for her first novel, Reflections, and is editing her second completed novel, Dear Oprah.
Anna Tomczak’s work has been featured in exhibitions at and collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Florida Gulf Coast Museum of Art, Harn Museum of Art, McGraw-Hill, Museum of Florida Art, Norton Museum of Art, Polaroid Collections, Polk Museum of Art, Sony Latin-America and Tampa Museum of Art. Artist awards include the Florida Individual Artist Fellowship and Career Enhancement Grant; Polaroid Artist Support Program Grant; Loft Nota Bene Artist Residency, Spain; Escape to Create Artist Fellowship, Seaside, FL; Distinguished Visiting Artist—Anna Lamar Switzer Center for Visual Arts, FL; Southeast Museum of Photography, Florida; Atlantic Center for the Arts Cultural Exchange Fellowship, La Napoule Arts Foundation, France. Her work has been featured in publications such as: Sanctuary, Anna Tomczak, Photography, curated with essay by Barbara Hitchcock, Polaroid Collections. 74 page Monograph, Fresco Fine Art Publications; The Georgia Review, View Camera Magazine, Camera Arts, Studio Photography and Design, Florida History Magazine, Polaroid Manipulations KCarr, Photo Portfolio Success JKaplan and Digital Photo Art Theresa Airey. Tomczak earned a BA in Theater Arts from Pennsylvania State University; and an MFA in Fine Art Photography, University of Florida. This combination provided her the foundation for the dramatic imagery realized in her current work.
Erin Trauth is an MFA student and composition instructor at the University of South Florida. She has published short stories in Fiction Fix and Calliope, and was the 2007 recipient of the Thelma F. Young Award for Excellence in Fiction for “The Dress,” the second chapter of her novel manuscript.
Kathryn VanSpanckeren, Professor of English and Writing at the University of Tampa, has been Poetry Editor of Tampa Review, organizer of UT’s Writers at the University series, Coordinator of the Writing Program, and advisor of QUILT, the student literary magazine. She has published poetry in many journals including Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Carolina Quarterly, River Styx, boundary 2, Contact II, etc. She lives near the tip of Davis Island with her husband and small dog, where the night sky allows clear views of the stars. Her passions include American Literature; her book Outline of American Literature (a literary history that has been translated into over 25 languages and is used widely around the world as well as in the U.S.) is maintained on the U.S. Dept. of State website. It grew out of her lectures while she was a Fulbright Professor of American Literature in Indonesia. She has taught in Australia, collected folklore in Nepal, and lectured on American literature in Thailand, the Philippines, Burma, Australia, Egypt, Tunisia, Portugal, and Argentina. From l990-1993 she was Academic Director of the 6-week Fulbright Summer Seminar in American Literature for professors of American Literature from abroad. She has co-authored scholarly books on Margaret Atwood and the late novelist and poet John Gardner, and is currently working on a poetry manuscript and new book on Margaret Atwood, as well as a longer version of her popular history of U.S. Literature. She grew up in a rural area of Central California North of Santa Barbara; scholarships and a succession of odd jobs allowed her to go to the University of California Berkeley (BAs in English and Folklore and Mythology), Brandeis (MA) and Harvard (MA, Ph.D.).
Genanne Walsh graduated from the Warren Wilson MFA Program. Her work has appeared in Puerto del Sol and Bloom (forthcoming), and online at Swink, Blackbird, 42Opus, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere. She lives in California now, but went to high school and college in Florida.
Scott Ward, Professor of Literature and Creative Writing, M.A., University of South Carolina is a poet whose first book, Crucial Beauty (Scop Publications), won the 1990 Loiderman Poetry Prize. His most recent volume is Wayward Passages (2006, Black Bay Books). He has served as poetry editor of Southern Humanities Review and Shenandoah. His poems have appeared in anthologies such as American Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon) and Buck and Wing: Southern Poetry at 2000 (Washington and Lee) and journals, including America, Southern Humanities Review, Shenandoah, and The Christian Century.
James Whorton Jr. is author of the novels Approximately Heaven and Frankland. He teaches at SUNY Brockport.